Killer of Armenian 'genocide' journalist jailed for 22 years

AN ISTANBUL court has sentenced the assassin of Armenian journalist Hrant Dink to nearly 23 years in prison.

Editor of bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos and Turkey's best-known Armenian voice abroad, Mr Dink was shot as he left his Istanbul office in January 2007. His killer Ogun Samast was 17 and unemployed when the murder took place. He was sentenced yesterday to 22 years and ten months.

Mr Dink had angered nationalists with articles referring to a Turkish "genocide" of Christian Armenians in 1915.

Another court is hearing the cases against two other main suspects in the conspiracy and a handful of others accused of being linked to the plot.

Eyten Mahcupyan, who became editor of Agos, praised the court for being 'courageous enough to go with the evidence, and not go down an ideological path He said it would set an example to another court hearing the Dink conspiracy cases, a point echoed by a lawyer for Mr Dink's family.

"Ogun Samast and other suspects were not expecting this sentence," said lawyer Fethiye Cetin. "This is very important to deter this sort of crime."

Mr Dink was frequently criticised by Turkish nationalists, including top politicians and prosecutors, for saying the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during the First World War One was genocide.

Nationalists see such comments as a threat to national unity in predominantly Muslim Turkey.

The government says that both Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks died in large numbers as the Ottoman empire collapsed.